Nisargadatta Maharaj: The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet is not. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves; it has no cause and serves no purpose. It just happens when we are absent-minded. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atma. To the Self the world is but a colorful show, which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. Without desire or fear he enjoys it, as it happens.

Questioner: The person immersed in the world has a life of many flavors. He weeps, he laughs, loves and hates, desires and fears, suffers and rejoices. The desireless and fearless jnani, what life has he? Is he not left high and dry in his aloof-ness?

M: His state is not so desolate. It tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. He is happy and fully aware that happiness is his very nature and that he need not do anything, nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him, more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself. You imagine that without cause there can be no happiness. To me dependence on anything for hap-piness is utter misery. Pleasure and pain have causes, while my state is my own, totally uncaused. independent, unassailable.

Q: Like a play on the stage?

M: The play was written, planned and rehearsed. The world just sprouts into being out of nothing and returns to nothing.

Q: Is there no creator? Was not the world in the mind of Brahma, before it was created?

M: As long as you are outside my state, you will have Creators, Preservers and Destroyers, but once with me you will know the Self only and see yourself in all.

Q: You function nevertheless.

M: When you are giddy, you see the world running circles round you. Obsessed with the idea of means and end, of work and purpose, you see me apparently functioning. In reality I only look. Whatever is done, is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they all are real to the man in bondage; to me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself. I may perceive the world just like you. but you believe to be in it, while I see it as an iridescent drop in the vast expanse of consciousness.

Q: We are all getting old. Old age is not pleasant - all aches and pains, weakness and the approaching end. How does a jnani feel as an old man? How does his inner self look at his own senility?

M: As he gets older he grows more and more happy and peaceful. After all, he is going home. Like a traveler nearing his destination and collecting his luggage, he leaves the train without regret.

Q: Surely there is a contradiction. We are told the jnani is beyond all change. His happiness neither grows nor wanes. How can he grow happier because older, and that in spite of physical weakness and so on?

M: There is no contradiction. The reel of destiny is coming to its end - the mind is happy. The mist of bodily existence is lifting - the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.

Q: Let us say, the jnani is ill. He has caught some flu and every joint aches and burns. What is his state of mind?

M: Every sensation is contemplated in perfect equanimity. There is no desire for it, nor refusal. It is as it is and the he looks at it with a smile of affectionate detachment.

Q: He may be detached from his own suffering, but still it is there. M: It is there, but it does not matter. Whatever state I am in, I see it as a state of mind to be accepted as it is.

Q: Pain is pain. You experience it all the same.

M: He who experiences the body, experiences its pains and pleasures. I am neither the body, nor the experiencer of the body.

Q: Let us say you are twenty-five years old. Your marriage is arranged and performed and the household duties crowd upon you. How would you feel?

M: Just as I feel now. You keep on insisting that my inner state is moulded by outer events. It is just not so. Whatever happens, I remain. At the root of my being is pure awareness, a speck of intense light. This speck, by its very nature, radiates and creates pictures in space and events in time - effortlessly and spontaneously.

As long as it is merely aware there are no problems. But when the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise. During sleep the mind is in abeyance and so are pain and pleasure. The process of creation continues, but no notice is taken. The mind is a form of consciousness, and consciousness is an aspect of life. Life creates everything, but the Supreme is beyond all.

Excerpted from I Am That